The Thing About Earworms: February in the Garden.

The thing about earworms is sometimes they can be random and annoying and sometimes they can be just what you need to hear.

As I sit writing this, the gloomy weather that has been constant this year is still lurking outside my window.  I'm feeling the need to get into the garden, Spring is pulsing away and in the garden, my snowdrops are in full display, the daffodils are showing the first signs of yellow as their buds begin to swell and my Salix 'Mount Aso' has put forth glorious pink catkins for the first time since I planted it several years ago but the garden is still a no go zone sadly so for now I'm trying to work on other projects while I listen to the building work going on below and find myself humming the same few lines of earworm over and over again.

The former playhouse sat on gravel above a plastic liner to stop
it rotting. Now there's a lot of digging to do to remove it!

If you have read any of my previous blogs you will know by now that our garden is very much in transition.  Since last month the landscapers have finally arrived on site and there is rapid progress on the new terrace although with the cold and rain we've had this month the garden currently looks like the aftermath of a music festival.  

The standard of work being done is amazing and the team are lovely, we talk as I bring them drinks throughout the day and discuss the technical aspects of the build like the width of the jointing on the paving, the location of the steps and whether the brick raised bed at the edge of the terrace ought to have drainage at the bottom and a waterproof liner between the soil and the house to stop problems with damp creeping in before they start.  

The base for the new patio in it's early stages.  The constant rain is playing havoc
with the lawn which struggles to drain at the best of times because of our clay soil.

I think the building team think I'm a little bit eccentric wanting to be so involved in the process, but this final stage of our home transformation is important to me. The garden is my happy place and once the hard landscaping elements are completed I can finally reclaim my space and start planting up the newly created bed where once a playhouse stood before tackling the rest of the transformation over the next year.

For now all I can do is peek wistfully out of the kitchen window at the chaos while I plan what to do once the building team leaves.  There will need to be a new path to the allotment.  The stepping stones that have worked so well for the last few years have been lost in a sea of mud and I'd like to create an interesting route through to our allotment and wood shed that can survive our increasingly wet winters.  I've also got plans to plant up the new bed where the playhouse used to be with shade tolerant deciduous shrubs and spring flowering plants to continue the woodland theme that I've started at the other side of the oak tree.

Eventually I'm also planning on reshaping our lawn to create two connected but distinct 'rooms within the garden separated with planting as well as a softer gravel garden nearer the house to link the new terrace to the existing decking. My ultimate aim is a modern cottage garden with a touch of Gertrude Jekyll style arts and crafts.

All these improvements will take time, money and effort to complete and I shall continue to document them as time goes by but for now back to that earworm.  For anybody who is still interested it's the classic 1993 hit 'Things Can Only Get Better' by D-ream.